Love story: or my lack of tits until age 20.

Fifth grade.

Stretch pants.  Side ponytail.  Bart Simpson t-shirt.

Seat next to me occupied by one boy.

The boy.

Blonde hair.  Dimples.  Guns & Roses tshirt.

Swoon.

Seat on other side of me occupied by another boy.

Specifically not the boy.

Jeans. Red t-shirt.  Plastic digital watch used to communicate with ‘spies’.

Wrinkle nose, roll eyes, try to ignore any and all sounds eminating from his desk.

Lean a little closer to the boy to ask a question.

Flip hair.  Twirl pencil.  Smile.

Something hits my face.

It has been launched from the other side.

And then again.

Bouncing off my cheek, a fruitsnack falls onto my desk.

Followed by inane giggling.

Blush away from the boy.

Turn to glare at the other boy.

He is sitting on his package of fruit snacks.

A look of sheer determination on his face.

Breath held, brow furrowed he focuses.

Then, a fart.

Onto a fruit snack.

A fruit snack he then tries to launch at my face.

A fart fruit.

The boy now checking out another girl.

She already has tits.

I don’t.

For the next ten years.

I will attract nothing.

But more fart fruit.

Ryan Mikel………

The day I announced my engagement to a Serbian, my mother started quoting lines from Not Without My Daughter.  In case you don’t watch Lifetime-that would be the flick with Sally Fields about a woman who marries a Middle Eastern guy and then can’t leave his country.  Well, can’t leave it without her daughter.

Insert my mother’s irrational fear.
Don’t ask me how she made the connection.  I distinctly remember her referring to the ‘tribal’ nature of Serbs, despite the fact that mine was about as Parisian as they come.

Regardless, during the course of my six-month engagement (no-we will not be diving into further details on that subject), she took to randomly calling me with questions about our future.

I should mention here that when it comes to pronunciation, my mom is handicapped.  So the day she called me to ask how to pronounce my would-be last name, I knew we were going to have problems.  It had taken her three months to stop calling him Lukas (his real name being Luka), so I just figured the surname was going to be a lost cause.

Nevertheless, this is the conversation that transpired between us when she unleashed the Spanish Inquisition on me:

Mom:  ‘Hi honey, just calling to see how things are going.  Say, how do you pronounce Luka’s last name again?  You are going to take it, aren’t you?  Or are you going to hyphenate?  Just want to make sure I can pronounce it.

Me:  (Deep breath) ‘Ok Mom, its Markovic.  Mar-Ko-Vich.

Mom: “Mykarvo?’

Me: “No, Mar-ko-vic’

Mom: ‘Mer-kar-ma?’

Me: ‘Nope, not Merkarma Mom, MAR-KO-VICH’

Mom: (deep sigh on her end) ‘Mary-Kug-vok?’

Me: ‘I have an idea, why don’t we talk about something else for twenty minutes, and come back to this.  Approach it with a new start a little later.

Mom: ‘k, yes, great idea.’

(We continue chatting about God-only knows what for the next fifteen minutes)

Me: ‘Ok Mom, are you ready to try the name again?’

Mom: ‘yes’

Me: Ok, grab a pen.

Mom: “Graaaaaaa-Baaaaaaa-Puuuuuuunnn’

Me: (pinching nose between eyes with one hand, deep sigh of concentration with the other)  “No Mom, Grab. A. Pen.”

Mom: ‘Gruuuubbbb-Aaaaaaaa-Piiiiinnnn’

Me: Oh for Chrissake woman, GRAB A WRITING UTENSIL SO THAT YOU CAN WRITE DOWN THE NAME

(thirty second silence)

Mom: (laughing)  ‘Oh Whoops, did I really just do that?’

Me: (shaking head in disbelief) ‘Yes mom, yes you did’

She never did learn to pronounce his name.  God help me if I ever marry a Middle Eastern man.  Scratch that, God help that man.

incognito first date

My man-shopping friend (see her blog in my links) has asked me to type up a story of my worst first date.  To be fair, there are several contenders, but I will stick to that which she specifically requested.

The date I didn’t know I was on.

My parents have lived in Europe for eleven years, which made Thanksgiving in college a bit of a homesick nightmare.  In November of my junior year, I lived with some interesting characters (see my posts on roommates and neighboring potheads for further info), one of whom was nice enough to invite me to Thanksgiving dinner at his parents house so that I wouldn’t be alone on the holiday.  An extremely kind gesture on his part, and one that I happily accepted.  I piled into the car with him that Thursday morning, and the two of us drove outside Seattle to get some good old fashioned holiday yumminess.

Little did I know he had told his parents we were dating.

I was not even remotely attracted to this guy.  He took pride in not cleaning his bathroom and referred to the unholy build-up in his toilet as ‘Barnacle Bill”.  He was as opposite my type as a guy can get.  He constantly referred to myself and one other roommate as ‘the artists’ of the flat, and periodically made snide comments under his breath about our contribution to society (or lack thereof).  Until that day I was under the impression we tolerated one another for rents sake, but nothing more.

And then I met his parents.

They asked me over the course of the evening to tell them how we had met, and what our first date had been like.  Needless to say, it was a tad uncomfortable.  I didn’t know how to react to them, so I instead focused on shoving mouthfuls of delicious stuffing and potatoes into my mouth.  His grandmother was also present, and during a board game at the end of the evening I was asked to write down which magazine I would like to be on the cover of-SHE looked at her grandson and made the remark:

‘Now now, we all know you want to say Playboy-let her answer though’.

Ummmmmm…….what?  The whole affair lasted about six hours.  Six hours of his family being under the misguided impression that I was his girlfriend when in fact I was his very uncomfortable, very unavailable (as far as he was concerned) roommate.

On the way back to the apartment WE SHARED, I stared out the window in total uncomfortable silence.  I mean really, what on Earth could I say?!

Three months later he told one of our other roommates that I had been ‘inviting him to my bed’ and that he ‘knew it was only a matter of time’.

Seriously.  We never dated, but I’m not sure his parents believe that.